During the past years, I have shared talks at various venues regarding how modern science illuminates the love of Jesus Christ as our best personal and collective option.
Here you find three presentations (videos) as shared in Rome in May 2013 at Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum.
Searching for equilibrium is one of the most instinctive and fundamental tasks we human beings perform in our lives. This is particularly difficult in this day and age when the “turbulent forces” of modernity induce a fast pace of life that hinders our ability to be fully attentive to one another and to ourselves. During the past few decades a host of ideas have been established in order to study natural complexity, and in particular the one produced by turbulence. This talk explains how such modern notions help us visualize the essential options we all face regarding equilibrium and shows how such ideas point us to one, and only one, serene state in which we all may achieve real peace. It is argued, citing a variety of Biblical passages, that such a desired condition may be approached via the dynamic practice of humility, repentance and love, as personified by Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is symbolized by the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle that uniquely leads us to the Origin of all.
Searching for order is one of the most pressing tasks we humans attempt during our lives. This quest is particularly difficult when the evil of “chaotic forces” propels us into restless states whose intrinsic disorder hampers our ability to find our way to God. During the past few decades a host of ideas have been established in order to study natural complexity, including the identification of pathways that progressively degrade “order” into the specific disorder of “chaos‘” and that define a host of chaotic trees, as epitomized by the iconic Feigenbaum tree, or fig tree in German. This talk explains how such notions help us visualize the essential options we all face and shows how the ideas point us to the straight roots of such trees as the only common ground (that is, “under the fig tree”) where we all may achieve true order and peace. It is argued, citing a host of Biblical passages, that the modern concepts provide a rich symbolism consistent with Scripture that, in particular, allows us to further appreciate, in a strikingly coincidental fashion, why Jesus may have, seemingly out of character, cursed and withered a fruitless fig tree as he rebuked the wind (evil in of itself in both instances) and why He may have asked us to learn a lesson from a fig tree and other trees (even from those chaotic ones budding in science twenty centuries later!) as a mysterious and yet urgent precursor to His second coming. The implications of the notions regarding our need to be always watchful, including our prescribed conversion by coming down our own fig trees, are emphasized.
The belief that God is made of three distinct persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is a fundamental doctrine in Christianity. This talk introduces a mathematical construction having three united components that, in a special limiting case, helps us visualize key attributes of the Blessed Trinity: the Father in heaven via a loving and light conducting bell curve concentrated at infinity (heaven), the Son in a uniform and serene histogram that satisfies the defining adagium “cut the mountains and fill the valleys,” and the Holy Spirit in a space-filling transformation built by mid-point additions of unity that joins the Father and the Son and proceeds from both of them. It is explained how the scientific construct, and contrary to notions regarding power-laws in natural and man-made complexity, invite us to find order, peace and love, but only in the artful and spiritual limit having a superior dimension and how such a lovely diagram allows us to harmonize the curious story of St. Augustine and the child at the beach. It is also explained how the ideas are related to a variety of Biblical citations related to the members of the Most Blessed Trinity.
